“In the debris we found a hole which we thought would lead us somewhere and it looked stable,” said Capt. Mulligan.

There was something looming above them that Mulligan and his team deemed only incidental. Building 7 was far from stable and was threatening to collapse on them.

“Oh, yeah,” Harvey recalled yesterday, like he was casually remembering a walk in the park.

Next, the team shimmied into a smoke-filled, ash-laden 40-foot abyss.

At the bottom of the abyss, Harvey called out: “Anyone there?”

Suddenly, a frantic but strained voice: “I’m here, over here.”

The voice was that of Lenny Artizzone, building superintendent, who was trapped on an escalator on Level B-2, 300 feet away.

“We saw a hole in the debris about 2-feet wide by about a foot-and-a-half-wide high, which we suspected might lead us to the voice,” said Mulligan.

Lying on their backs to give them more clearance, the team, like Vietnam-era tunnel rats, propelled themselves by their heels along the 300-foot tunnel through the debris – while Building 7 groaned overhead.

“We got there and saw Lenny up about 20 feet. We scrambled up there and I could see his bone protruding through the skin of his left leg. He was in pain, but the area wasn’t stable and we had to move him,” said Harvey.

Mulligan: “We piled Lenny onto Brian’s back with the three of us crawling beside him to keep Lenny on top. Brian crawling down on his stomach was like a human sled.”

Once down below, everyone realized that carrying the injured Lenny, they couldn’t go back through the tiny tunnel the way they came.

Lenny kept on repeating, “Thank you, thank you.” The firefighters splinted his leg and were now faced with another problem: how to get back out.

The team saw another hole and widened the entrance. Again they transformed themselves into a human sled, with Lenny on Brian’s back.

They brought him 100 feet through this tunnel and finally reached a clearing. Forty feet above was safety. But wires, rods and concrete made it impossible to get Lenny out.

“We called up for some equipment to be lowered and then we started cutting away a space so we could get Lenny up. He kept on saying, ‘Thanks.'”

Meanwhile, Tony Palmentieri and Peter Strahl suggested they look for some other clearings to see if there were any other survivors. They returned with bad news.

There was a fire underneath them – fire below and Building 7 above. But they made a clearing and a basket was lowered. Lenny was hauled to safety.

Twenty minutes later, Building 7 crashed down where Operation Lenny had been completed without a hitch.

Lenny Artizzone could not be contacted because he is in intensive care.

As far as Team Supermen goes:

“We’re happy for Lenny, but it is overshadowed by our concern for our brave brothers who are missing. Any one of our brothers here or who are missing wouldn’t have hesitated to do anything to save someone,” said Mulligan.

Members of Team 236, like every other rescuer, had only one ambition: “We wish all of us could do it for all our missing brothers.”